The Memory Police

What an odd book. The premise sounds enticing enough: a dystopian novel in which in habitants of a large island have to endure government enforced “forgettings” of every day objects. It's a terrifying premise in one sense. On any day, the citizens may wake up to see that their memories of something have been erased and everyone has to destroy destroy all of those items. They are made to forget birds, perfume, ribbons, emeralds, boats, etc. The Memory Police also terrorize the island, destroying what remnants of these items remain, as well as arrest and round up the requisite dystopian resistance movement and those that, interestingly, have a genetic difference that keep them from succumbing to the “forgetting”.

Fascinating idea, right? That's about where the interesting parts end. However, the last few pages of the book get so weird, are so unexpected, and leave you in a state of shock it ALMOST makes the book's shortcomings seem more intentional and of a whole. But first, let's talk about it's issues.

The narrator is flat and two-dimensional. She speaks of her past and longings, but only as much as moves the story along. The types of things an ACTUAL human in such a situation would recall and muse about never arise. Has she ever had a romantic feeling or dalliance before the time we meet her? Has she ever had a job in this society other than the books she writes? What does she cook? What does she know of the history of the island, it's government, etc? We never know. We hear about her parents and her schooling–that's about it, and we spend the entire time in her head as she muses about the world in which she lives.

She repeatedly does things for which there is no prior indication she would ever do. In the beginning she seems an incredibly passive “keep your head down, don't rock the boat” kind of character, and then in a moment she's building a secret bunker underneath her house to hide families and friends in this underground movement. There's no growth or thought or moment of crisis, decision-making, or being pushed to this. It just... happens, and there's no subsequent reflection on it.

Every other character is only flatter. Her editor that she hides away is a married man and they begin sleeping with each other. Do they ever talk about how they rationalize it? Or do they feel ANYTHING about it? No. She has a line or two about “needing” someone in all the stress. But that's it. Is there any tension or romance? No. But it's also not purely mechanical as people's humanity is stripped away in such a society. It's just a thing that happens a few times.

The plot is even more difficult to get through. It is slow and unexciting, and there are moments that are supposed to be “exciting” but it tries too hard with weak prose to build tension, convey “action” and it falters. There are SO many massive logical gaps in the way this world is structured. Now, in a sci-fi dystopian set-up, I'm find with not everything being spelled out or having an answer. It's fine to have just one premise and play with it. But at least let that premise itself be thought out for more than a few minutes.

This book's plot is filled with every single of the mundane and boring dystopian novel tropes, with none of the exciting ones. It has an underground resistance, a secret room, a dead parent who left behind clues against the “regime”, a visit to the government headquarters, a party by dissidents which is broken up by an unexpected visit from the police, the “tense” police search of the residence while the character sees the one thing out of place that could give them up, the character that seems to know everything about this regime and how to fight it, but didn't let us know that until way too late in the book, people sleeping together because they're just around each other, caricatured “evil” government officials that are just one-note brutes that have no coherent philosophy about WHY the government does what it does. So and so forth.

The more interesting tropes are missing, though: fighting against the regime (she's hiding a “fugitive” in her basement, but for what end?), learning more about how the world became this way, meeting up with the resistance, experiencing the arrest of our heroes and ushering them into the inner workings of this society, finding out what happens to rebels, discovering what all these scientists are doing once they're invited to work for the government, enjoying a philosophical sparring match with government officials over life, society, and what makes us human?

I do need at, though, that there is an odd mechanic employed here of a “novel with then novel”, that is interesting in its own right, though not much more so. The narrator is writing this novel and there are portions of the book that are excerpts from what she's written. They're interesting at moments, but not enough to turn this book around.

That ending, though. Really, it's just the last few pages, but it's so haunting, it's still with me days after finishing this. My concern, though, is that it almost seems like the novelist had this premise and this end in mind, and then just did a bunch of filler to get us there. This could have easily been a fantastic short story. I do feel duped having read this. The premise is exciting enough that you're like, “oh wow, I've GOT to see what she does with this!”

It's just sad that the answer is an overwhelming, “oh wow, not that much.”